Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Beauty.

Somehow, it seems the harder one strives to achieve this end, the more elusive it becomes. Subtle, gracious, and pleasing, though one cannot always explain what or why a thing delights the eyes. We spend ourselves in vain that we may hear this word in conjunction with our person, "beautiful". For what? For the sake of being a living work of art? A personification of some platonic form, "beauty"? To be lovely is to be loved, we are told, yet more accurate perhaps, to be lovely is to be desired. Who among us can escape the desire to be wanted, even by those we do not care for? Such vanity.

3 comments:

Beauty is vain. (proverbs) Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher; all is vanity. (Ecclesiastes)

However...

Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart. (psalms)

I do not think that the desire to be wanted is always vanity. To seek after it in anyplace but the Lord is misplaced. We humans thirst to be loved because we were made to be in loving fellowship with a HOLY God, and he DOES want us. Because of this, people are lovely and for no other reason (despite what the world may say)

But I see what you are saying, because I have felt the desire to be wanted because of my own merits, and I have aimed to increase those merits for the praise of people. This is indeed a great vanity.

Thanks guys. This was as much a "hey, I should write about something, and this was the first thing that came to mind to muse about" post as anything. I'm afraid Stephen's thoughts are far more coherent and Biblical than what I wrote. =)